Just before Thanksgiving, a crew of about 50 homeschooling students and parent chaperones showed up in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to assist with Hurricane Helene relief efforts. They comprised Generation Joshua’s first ever Student Response Team.
“We’re here to work,” said 18-year-old Timothy, from Pennsylvania. “God gives us all a gift, and we’re just here to use it to help whoever we can, however we can, whenever we can.”
His sister Elizabeth, 17, added: “The Lord calls us to help those we can and those who are just in hard situations. So any way we can help, any way we can come out, take time out of our schedules—we want to be of aid. We want to spread the love of Christ to those who maybe haven’t heard it.”
The team volunteered through Samaritan’s Purse, the organization led by Franklin Graham and headquartered in the heart of the devastation. HSLDA’s Generation Joshua is dedicated to providing teens with training and opportunities to make a difference in their communities.
The crew of homeschool students and adult chaperones ready to help on the ground
A Logistical Feat
For three days straight, the enthusiastic teens traveled to various homes in the Asheville area, ready to serve in whatever way was needed. Most of the work consisted of what is called a “cut and drag”—processing and removing fallen trees on a homeowner’s property.
“It's kind of overwhelming to see 55 people come and just give their time and their efforts and their entire day just to help us out, when they came from all over the place,” said homeschooling mom Anna. “It’s also very humbling and we’re just very grateful.” She and her two kids and husband fared okay materially in the storm—their home is safe and they didn’t lose access to clean water.
Still, cleaning up the downed trees in their yard was a daunting task. They reached out to Samaritan’s Purse for help, and the Generation Joshua team showed up and cleared their yard in just a few hours.
The Generation Joshua team clearing trees
The relief effort is a logistical feat for Samaritan’s Purse, which at the time had more than 1,000 open work orders from homeowners waiting for help, and many more on a waitlist. By the time the Generation Joshua team arrived some 7 weeks after Helene, the organization had facilitated more than 10,000 volunteers completing 130,000 work hours in the Asheville area alone.
Devastation in the Asheville area
Many other groups are also working in the affected areas to bring restoration. Nevertheless, the Asheville area is still reeling.
“As a whole, the area is just decimated and you're seeing it, what, seven weeks out now,” Anna said, adding that it’s still hard for her emotionally to drive through some neighborhoods. “This is my home. I grew up here, built my life here.”
Some of the wreckage appears untouched, and it’s hard to fathom the number of downed trees. Mud and debris remain piled up in some homes. One homeowner cancelled a job with Samaritan’s Purse because he didn’t want to ask anyone to “mud out” his basement, which now also had a layer of sewage on top thanks to a burst plumbing pipe.
Widespread destruction still remains weeks after Helene made landfall
Those whose homes were untouched by fallen trees or flooding still suffered incredible loss and face ongoing hardships, including many who are not able to drink, bathe in, or launder their clothes in the water fed to their home. And as a local student volunteer told the group: Everyone knows someone who lost their life or their home.
“It has been very eye-opening just to see the level of disaster which has stricken this area and this community,” said team member Lauren, 17, from Kentucky. “And I think it has really just opened my heart to the people here and to just everything we’ve seen, everything we've done and just how even a little impact can go so far. And maybe it’s just moving one log. But in the grand scheme of things, it really does make a difference.”
Many homeowners are overwhelmed by and physically unable to accomplish the recovery work on their property—including some of the homes the Student Response Team visited. What might take weeks or months of sporadic hours devoted to cutting and lugging trees around (or a massive fee to a contractor which many cannot afford) was quick work for a large group of eager teens.
Just a glimpse of the wreckage in the Asheville area, November 2024
The team arrived at the Samaritan’s Purse base of operations in Asheville, North Carolina, each morning to check in as volunteers, meet up with the team lead, Tim, and his wife, Tracy, and find out the first assignment for the day. Tim is a retired police officer and she’s a nurse. They were volunteers also. The first day included safety training and receipt of the orange Samaritan’s Purse shirt that marks all of their volunteers.
Tim briefed the team on the day’s work in front of a truck loaded with supplies, safety equipment and water. Then the group headed out to the first address. Since the teens made quick work of the tree removal assignments, they were able to interact with close to a dozen homeowners.
A Harrowing Account
In one case, trees hit a home directly while the homeowner and his family were inside. The homeowner’s son, Garrison, described the night in great detail to the team.
“We were all awake when it happened,” he said, adding that no one expected anything more than a few days without power from the storm. “I didn’t think that I would be living somewhere else right now. I didn’t think that I was going to get out of school for two weeks. I didn’t think that I would have close friends who lost everything. I didn’t think I would have people who I knew who lost their businesses. I didn’t think I’d know people who have lost their friends. Nothing could have prepared the city of Asheville for this at all.”
When the power went out, he went upstairs to grab a flashlight. The sun had just come up and it was still pouring rain. “It’s like a wave of water,” he said. He went back downstairs, and then the first tree hit the kitchen. They ducked into his parent’s room, and then the second tree hit his and his brother’s bedroom on the second story. “It sounds, I can’t even begin to describe it,” he said. “It sounds like a train is crashing through your house.”
“So we open the door and you just see like insulation all over the living room floor, all over the couch,” he added. “You see rain. There is a hole in my house and there's rain getting in my living room on my bottom floor.” They moved into the office and sat there for hours, waiting for the storm to pass. Eventually he and his little brother and father grabbed what they could and left the house on foot. They walked several miles, climbing over dozens of trees and dodging power lines along the way to a Sonic, where his grandma picked them up. He’s grateful to be alive.
“I have to thank God,” he said. “I mean, He’s the reason. He’s the reason that I'm standing here on the back of this truck telling my story.”
Garrison’s dad, the homeowner, added a word of thanks and said he never could have imagined so many of Garrison’s peers would be the ones helping to clean up. “It’s made a huge impact on Garrison because it’s not just, you know, a bunch of adult volunteers coming to help,” he said. “It was kids his age.”
Another homeowner, Stanley, was impressed with the quick and thorough work of the students. While he said the devastation and loss of life made him cry for two or three days, he said the community coming together after the storm also brought tears.
“Everybody came together, you know,” he said. “Asheville became one. Because everybody was affected by this thing, they came together. And it made people cry, too, because the happiness, you know, for people to come together, not to have nothing.”
Generation Joshua Director Jeremiah Lorrig commented on the heart of these students: “I love seeing these young people step up and say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ And I just saw them tackle a yard that was full of debris, branches and trees and everything, lying all over the ground. And they just jumped in, they picked it up, and they created a pile taller than I am. And it’s just incredible to see how much they can do with willing hearts and a few minutes of training.”
Communities and Volunteers Coming Together
When the work at a given home was completed, the students gathered with the Samaritan’s Purse team lead to pray with the homeowner and present them with a Billy Graham Bible signed by each of the volunteers. Several students remarked on how meaningful the presentation was, including Mason, 17, from California, who said it was the highlight of his trip to be able to present one of the Bibles.
“The whole reason I came out here is just to serve God and to see what these families have gone through and to be able to talk with them and pray for them at the end,” he said.
Samaritan’s Purse employee and Generation Joshua alum Peter Baergen helped organize the Student Response Team effort. “It’s amazing to see the volunteers that God sends out to help —the willing hearts, the folks who are willing to drop everything, drive across the country, or maybe just drive across the road, to come out to help their neighbor in time of need,” he said. “It’s a huge blessing and it’s an honor to be part of it.”
Peter Baergen, a Samaritan's Purse employee and GenJ alum, addressing the students
He also took the time to address the students during an evening debrief, remarking on a homeowner who couldn’t clean up her yard because of a bad knee. “To see you guys show up with smiling faces, with orange shirts, to go move an incredible amount of brush in like ten minutes—for us we’re going out there, it’s fun,” he said. “That’s why we came here, right? For that lady…that’s a huge burden lifted off of her.”
In total, the students completed about 1,200 volunteer hours. Samaritan’s Purse reported a record number of volunteers for Helene. The previous annual high for volunteers was 20,000 volunteers, but the organization saw 32,000 volunteers across the affected states in just one month following the hurricane.
“We think it’s really important to teach our children to nurture that aspect of charity in them,” said one of the parent chaperones, homeschooling mom Jenny, from Illinois. “And being here this week has been able to let our kids see that the world outside of their own little world is much bigger, and the need to help your fellow American, your fellow man, you know, helping—we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ. And being here this week has really solidified that thought process and that moral upbringing and that value that we try to instill in our kids.”
Jonathan, the local student volunteer who joined the team, is 19 and lives in Hendersonville, about 30 minutes south of Black Mountain. While he said it’s devastating to see people in his own neighborhood suffering, he added that he’s encouraged by the relief work.
The students clearing trees
“It helps to see everybody,” he said. “Students from all over, all over the country, no matter what their ages, in high school. Just coming and helping and working hard. Seeing the eyes on people’s faces as we're done and their smiles. Just seeing how happy they are and grateful they are and getting to see this neighborhood.”
HSLDA Action Executive Director Joel Grewe concurred with many students and parents present who voiced appreciation for the flexibility of homeschooling that enabled them to serve.
“One of the things that's really cool about homeschooling is that when necessary, it’s incredibly flexible,” he said. “And one of the things we have here is 50 homeschoolers from around the US and their parents who decided, you know what, for the next couple days we’re taking care of our community. And so you can put things on pause, jump on a plane, get in a truck or a van, and drive and come and serve the broader community.”
Some of the high schoolers who came to help
Several HSLDA employees also joined the effort, including Generation Joshua alum Ethan Harper, who works in IT. “I heard that flexibility needed to be a thing, so I just came with an open mind,” he said. “But being in the middle of it is incredible. It’s incredible to see God’s power put on display in the destruction but also his grace in the disaster relief effort and everybody coming together to build back.”
“To anybody that’s considering looking at the Generation Joshua program or trying out the program I can’t encourage it enough—it was life-changing for me,” he added.
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Photo credit: Abigail Hoke, HSLDA Action